


Cancerous Love

by MaddyBoo



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Cancer, Every character will make an apperance at some point, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Multiple Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddyBoo/pseuds/MaddyBoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since you were eight you have been prepared for your death. As the years went on you learned how to not fear it, after all there seems to be no hope in outliving this cancer that has been slowly killing you for years. In fact, death sounds like an unreal paradise at this point. You're fine living the way you have been, living as an empty shell.<br/>At least that is until you reunite with a certain Dave Strider in collage, which causes an avalanche of feelings you have been trying to keep locked away since the first day you met him in high school. For the first time since you were diagnosed, you gain a hope for your future. Dave makes you want to live. But the real question is, how are you going to fight for a life that you have been willing to let go since you were a child?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Snow

**Author's Note:**

> I am not an expert when it comes to cancer so please forgive me if I make a mistake and tell me so I can keep that in mind while I write. Also, tags as well as relationships will be updated as this story goes.  
> If you have any questions or just want to say hi my tumblr is negative0fox.tumblr.com

When the house phone rang through the house you were unaware of how much that phone call would change your poorly put together life. Perhaps, if you had known that it would shatter your fragile life you put back together, a life so fragilely rebuilt that it probably looked like someone had thrown multiple rocks into one of your fathers stain glass windows at his church, and then tried to recreate the shattered fragments back into a picture depicting Jesus being handled by the Virgin Mary, but where there was once a picture so strikingly beautiful when the sun shone through it at just the right angle, now resembled a family of disproportioned ogres that looked more as if they were about to dine on the baby’s fair bones. Even with all of the pieces placed back into their rightful position they were all off and some of the spots were missing their glass. 

Only if you had ignored that phone call…

Instead, when Kankri’s voice rang out throughout the house, traveling through the small hallway and into your room, you begrudgingly listened to it, signaling the first stone to be thrown to break the top corner of the window, creating small fissures in the glass.

“Karkat! May you please answer the phone? I am in the middle of a verse at the moment and do not wish to lose my place.”

With a grand grumble passing your lips you pause the movie you were watching before swinging your feet off the edge of your bed. Walking out of your room, your pj pants fall back to their destined position around your ankles after having been hiked up to just below your knee from moving around in between the blankets. The wooden floor is cold on your feet after being all snug like a bug under the covers. Lately, everything has seemed to be a greater deal sensitive, but you imagine that to be due to the winter chill that has settled over the world.

The phone rings shrilly as you step into the kitchen, spotting Kankri sitting at the large wooden table with the bible held between his pale fingers. Unlike you, your brother believe fiercely in the religion you have been taught to have faith in ever since you were conceived. Literally. Your father would read straight from the bible at night and to your mothers rounding tummy. You still aren’t sure when you lost your faith in a God, perhaps it was the night your mother died, or maybe you’ve lost it even before then. Maybe, you never really believed in it to begin with.

Another impatient ring from the black phone on your kitchen’s counter drags you out of your thoughts, snatching your gaze away from your brother’s concentrated face to the plastic device atop the counter.

A second rock is pulled back in the grip of that person’s hand, flying for the bottom half of the window this time as you step closer to the phone. 

Another stone flying at the glass, shattering it further once again until the cracks are beginning to take over the entire glass view as you pick the cool, plastic phone up into your hand and bring it to your ear.

“Hello?” you greet, eyes following the movement of Kankri’s hand turning a page in his book.

“Hello, I’m from the Middleton’s Hospital calling about Karkat Vantas’ results on his cancer screening. Are you Mr. Vantas?” the woman asks.

Without hesitation you reply, “Yes. This is him speaking.” It’s a lie, a lie that you only fell partially bad about. After all, this is about your health, you deserve to know firsthand before your father the result.

You know what she is going to say. She’s going to tell you that you are still free of cancer, as she has been doing every three months for the past year and a half. She is going to tell you that when you underwent the treatments in ninth grade they have successfully removed the cancer from you, that you still are perfectly healthy. That after having to treat your cancer in elementary school, middle school, and high school that it has finally, finally gone away completely. That you lab results show you are just like any other teenager.

But that doesn’t stop your heart from picking up pace inside your chest. It also does not stop that sick, knowing feeling to grow inside your gut, the one that has been growing over the past few weeks.

The last and final rock is being pulled back…

“I am very sorry to have to tell you this-“

The arm is beginning to move forward in slow motion, aiming directly for the middle of the already breaking glass…

“…but it seems that your son’s-“

The rock is released from the person’s hand, flying through the air toward baby Jesus himself.

“…leukemia has come back.” The phone falls from your hand, banging loudly against the counter and falling to the floor in what seems to be a deafening crash and bounces twice off the hardwood floor. The fall of the phone does not cover up the roaring sound of glass shattering as the rock sails through the already weakened head of Jesus as a baby, pieces of glimmering glass falling all around as your life is broken once again.

You can’t hear the lady’s faint voice over the phone as she asks if you’re okay, you don’t hear Kankri’s questioning tone as he finally focuses his attention on you. In fact, all you can hear is the nurse’s voice over and over again, forever on replay of telling him he once again has cancer.

The next thing that you are aware of is the fact that there is cold snow under your feet as you run through your yard, trying to get as far away from your house as possible as quick you can.

The snow that has been falling ever so gently is now freezing into your eyelashes and hair as well as turning the tips of your nose, ears, and fingers numb. Thank god you walk around the house with slippers on otherwise your feet would probably have already fallen off due to the extreme cold of the snow crunching beneath you as your run through the woods behind your house. Behind you Kankri’s voice is calling out to your frantically, but you ignore it and allow the snow covered wind to blow the sound away from your ears so you can slip away from the reality you don’t want to face.

You continue to run through the woods, weaving your way between barren oaks with spindly limbs and puffy pines that give random busts of green in this otherwise bleak setting. In fact, you don’t stop until you collapse heavily into a embankment of snow near a pond after you tripped and lost al strength to push yourself back up onto your feet. Now you have lost all feeling in your hands, nose, ears, and feet. You are very aware of how likely the possibility of having caught frostbite and having your limbs falling off due to it is, but that is merely a pebble on the mountain size of current worries and fears filling your head.    

You have cancer again. The doctor had said it was gone, that the probability of it coming back after last treatment was extremely low, but now once again it is flowing through your veins and poisoning your body once again. You’re sixteen, which means you have no choice in rather or not your go through the treatments again, you don’t get to decide if you have enough will left to fight for your survival, whih at this point you know you don’t. Instead, you have to do as your father wants, and you know damn well he is going to want you to force yourself through the all too painful treatments again. To lay in a hospital room for at least a year as your body fights against a battle that is never-ending. A year of your life wasted on the simple fact of trying to keep yourself alive while lying in a white bed in a building full of the dying. At least another year of no friends, no cable TV that’s actually good, not being able to go out with your friends (the little amount of douchenozzle shits you are able to call friends); but most importantly, once again forfeiting the prospect of your happiness to fight for a life you are tired of living.

You were so close to finally being happy too. In fact, life was beginning to get better for you. You had gained a new close friend named Dave Strider who you in fact want to be a great deal more than a friend to. You’ve tried before to ask him out but you always chickenshit yourself out of doing it, afraid at the possibility of losing him as a friend if he refuses. To be honest, you’re terrified of what will happen if he said yes as well. After all, you have never been in an actual relationship before and they are just as horrifying as they can be beautiful to you.

You watch your breath escape form your mouth in little white puffs while the pain of the cold tightens its hold on you. You don’t mind this painful numbness though, it’s a lot better than dealing with the heart aching pain clutching at your chest. 

As you watch the snow fall from the grey sky you remember how someone had said there are no two snowflakes alike. As you watch them fall around you you wonder if that’s true. If every single little snowflake that has ever left the sky has been an individual. It’s a charming thought in itself, one that could be inspiring even, if you hadn’t looked to your left to see the snow resting beside your head. All of it there is the same. There are no distinguishable pieces, instead it is a mass of the same exact white, the same exact temperature. Most important though is the fact that all of them can be pushed together to form a simple shape, a snowball for example. Once then none of its unique, none of the snow lying upon the ground or in the trees limbs or in the fur of an animal or even on the surface of your hoodie are unique. They are all the same. Does it really matter then at all that once they were individuals if they all formed the same thing and became indistinguishable from the rest in the end? You believe not.

Even worse once the snowflake touches the ground to become one of millions of others there is nothing beautiful about it, nothing special. Instead it is then looked upon with distaste by people who see it as a nuisance. Once snow becomes a type of work for people, such as having to be shoveled and cleared away, the charming quality of it that could hold anybody’s attention is now lost.

“Bro? What the fuck are you doing out here?”

Your head lifts up quickly off the freezing ground to be directed to none other than Dave Strider. His red coat was bundled tightly around his body with a scarf and hat to match. His exhales are made visible by the cold, coming out in small huffs and then dancing around the still falling snow. 

“I could ask the same fucking thing for you Strider.” You respond.

“Your brother is about to give himself an aneurysm worrying about where you went. I’m just here to do my usual heroic activities and save your ass from a serious case of frozen balls. Ya know, being your knight in shining armor as usual.” He grins at you.

You roll your eyes at him but you doubt he can see you do so considering the lack of sunlight outside as well as him wearing his shades. “Shut up. God, I can’t believe Kankri texted you.”

“I can. He knows I’m the only one who can find you whenever you just disappear on life. You always come back to this gnarled ass tree. I really don’t understand what you find so appealing about it. It’s dead inside, has been for years now. Hell, even the god damned bugs don’t fuck with this tree. Momma bugs just flying around telling their kids ‘Oh, don’t go by that tree Travis, you might catch its ugly.’ I bet your ass Pocahontas wouldn’t even touch this rotting thing.”

Dead on the inside. That’s the best way you can possibly think of to describe yourself. Dead on the inside; lifeless. Rotting away. You’ve been that way ever since you were diagnosed with cancer. Even at the age of eight you had known what exactly getting cancer meant. It meant that something inside of you was tearing your body apart, something you can barely fight against. You were also aware that you were going to die from it at a very early age. You’ve lasted longer than you thought, but you’re still young. A junior in high school. You’ve accepted that your death is imminent and that there was nothing you can do to stop it. Knowing that you were going to die in a few years made you die on the inside because it hurt too much to keep the hope of living.

But that is not the only thing that attracted you to this particular tree. What you find appealing about it, why you are returning to it ever since you moved here in ninth grade, is that during spring the most magnificent wild flowers of the most vibrant colors grow wildly all around its stump. It is absolutely beautiful to see such life surrounding a thing that is lifeless.  

“Hey. Karkat. Are you even listening man?”

You blink up at him, having lost yourself in your own thoughts while he continued to babble on about…honestly you have no fucking idea what he started to talk about.

“Come on. Let’s get you out of here before you get hypothermia.” He says before he bends down towards you and before you know it he has you positioned in his arms bridal style.

“Dave, what the fuck!?!? I can walk asshole!” You yell in frustration and humiliation at how easily he accomplished picking you up off the ground. 

“Listen, your hands are turning blue and we don’t have time to wait for your legs to unthaw so you can walk. I was being serious about your balls freezing.” 

As Dave begins to navigate his way through the woods you realize just how freezing you are. Being next to him with his body heat radiating off feels like you had been stuck in a freezer for a year and have been taken out to be set besides a fire. It’s painful as your body warms up, the type of aching pain you used to get when you were a kid and would spend all day outside with your hands in the snow as you made tunnels through the banks. 

“Do you even eat? You’re so light…” you hear Dave grumble above you but you decide to ignore him in order to wrap the end of his scarf around your hands.

It’s a bit embarrassing how little of a fight you put up against him carrying you but you truly do feel weak. To be honest you don’t eat much simply because you aren’t hungry. And it isn’t like you’re a twig, you have some weight. Also, let’s not forget the fact that Dave trains so he is in shape.

You almost fall asleep in Dave’s arms while listening to him breath above you. When he stops it’s because he is standing on your front porch and he has to say your name a few times in order to get you to open your eyes. Ever so gently he sets you down, some snow that has built up on the brim of his hat falling on you as he does so. As you get your feet underneath you it takes you a moment to get adjusted to standing since they have gone numb.

The porch light glows gently from behind you, illuminating Dave. You can see how vivid his lips look compared to his pale skin in this weather, and how the exertion of carrying you along with the nipping wind has set a soft blush on his cheeks. His nose is red and there are little snowflakes caught in his eyebrows as well as what little parts of his hair that are showing. 

“Here you are.” You says, “Safe and home.”

“Would you like to come in for hot chocolate?” you ask, trying to avoid the unavoidable conversation with Kankri and your father about your cancer as long as you can. Dave is a good excuse since they won’t start that discussion with someone at the house.

“Nah. Go reunite with your bro and calm his holy ass down. Your dad might be home by now too. Besides, I was in the middle of making some sick beats before Kank called me.”

“Oh, alright. Well, thank you.”

He gives you a small head nod saying “G’night” before beginning to turn and head off of your porch.

Before he can do so you call out to him again. “Uh, Dave?”

“Yeah?” he turns around to look at you, pale eyebrows raised in questioningly.

Before you have a chance to rethink what you’re doing, you grab him by his scarf and pull his pale lips to your own. 

This is your first kiss, and you needed it to be with Dave before you left. 

It is extremely selfish of you, especially when he begins to kiss back, to do this to him. He is not aware that you have cancer, or that you’ve ever had it in fact. When you had moved to this town after middle school you kept that fact under tight lips, hating the way people looked at you with pitying eyes once they knew. 

You just, you needed this so badly. You needed to know that someone, somewhere was alive. In a crazy sort of way his lips against yours seems to be the only real thing in existence. And holy fuck do you like him. You’ve liked him since you first started to talk. He has always given you those pesky little butterflies inside your stomach, and right now they are at a whole new level. 

You’re the first one to pull away, a deep red blush staining your cheeks. Before he has a chance to respond you have turned your back on him and are inside your house with the door pressed against your back. You don’t think you would have been able to stay out there with him anyways after that, way too afraid he was going to say he doesn’t like you that or that he wasn’t gay.

You are uncertain about a lot of things, but the one thing you will always know for sure is that it was that kissed shared with Dave on your porch on a winter’s night that was the only thing that had ever made you feel alive.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise everyone!!!   
> I am so so so so incredibly sorry for being such a sucky person and never adding onto this work but ta-da! I'm finally doing it!  
> Yes- this chapter is indeed short, however i am trying to get myself to make time for writing and I'm still getting into the swing of it so hopefully the next chapter will be greater in length.   
> Once again i am so sorry about the wait and i hope you enjoy!!! :3  
> (if there are any typos or such my apologizes as well)

                Facing the images staring back at you from the mirror you cannot help but to sigh in disappointment at what you see. You haven’t even started you first year of college and you already seem like finals are coming up next week. Of course it probably doesn’t help that you have just been cleared from the hospital after two and a half years of treatment for leukemia.

                Your brown eyes already look to be worn down and haunted, of course the deep purple bruises underneath them does not help in making you look alive. Your hair is a crazy mess that you have absolutely no idea how to fix. Ever since the chemotherapy that caused your hair to fall out, it has grown back in an even messier, curlier texture than before. With a low growl you pull a beanie down over your head in hopes to cover the disaster atop of it.

                Before you allow enough time to talk yourself out of going to class for the first day you pull your hoodie closer to your body, grab you bag with you books in it, and leave the small apartment you share with your cousin Kanaya and out into the fall weather.

                You have to take the public bus to class, since you haven’t had a chance to get a job or a car, and the walk allows you to calm yourself down. Once at the bus stop you lose yourself in your surroundings. You watch a child grab her mother’s hand tightly as they cross the street, raising her head to give her mother a bright smile. You notice a man leaving a coffee shop, taking a visible breath of relief after taking a sip of his drink. You also notice, with an undeniable sense of jealousy, as a man places loving kisses on his girlfriend’s lips. You look away, just in time to watch as the blue and red city bus pulled up to the stop.

                You throw the change in the compartment, then shuffle down the aisle. You find a seat towards the back that is empty and gratefully take it, setting your bag in the worn out seat beside you to protect yourself from other riders.

                After the twenty minute ride the bus pulls up to the community college, where you step off the dirty stairs and head into the building. Even though it’s not winter yet, the slight wind chill has gotten to your bones, making you shiver. When you step into the building you sigh as the heat surrounds you, sneaking its way into your hoodie and kissing your bare skin of frost.

                Although you arrived to school about ten minutes before your English class even started you still end up being late because you had gone into the wrong wing on campus and had to go to the opposite side of the school, wasting your time. Why can’t someone just but signs up? Once you finally manage to find the huge wooden door with 204 scrawled on it you step in and immediately all eyes went directly to you in the dead silent of the classroom, but your eyes only went to one person.

                With a quick beat your breath catches in your throat.

                Your heart flutters once like a wounded bird’s wing until it stopped moving altogether and fell through your ribs down to your feet.

Every single once of blood disappeared from your body all at once, leaving you freezing and with a feeling of nausea.

                You could never forget those lips, the thin pink, soft lines you spent over a year fantasizing about in high school. Or the way the tip of that nose slightly curves upward at the tip. But most off all you could never forget those sunglasses covering his eyes.

                Dave Strider was most definitely person, what with his cool kid charms and beautiful appearance. However to you, a kid who had pinned after him for years, he was absolutely unforgettable, especially with his face resurfacing to mind every single night in regret.

                You thought about this moment multiple times. In fact, you even once made a whole god damned diagram for what to say to him and how to respond to his questioning. You’ve thought about just kissing the breath from between his lips if you ever got a chance to see him again. Better yet you fantasized about him returning the kiss from all those years ago, finally returning the feelings you had (the feelings that are beginning to bubble up again just from the sight of him sitting there). Instead, you stand there open-mouthed and wide eyes twitching from a sore heart. Instead, without a single word, you turn around and leave.

                It hurts. It hurts so fucking bad to see him again. You thought you could manage this pain if you saw him since that night over two years ago, but now it’s in your mind replaying all over again. How you kissed him on your porch, so innocent and sweet and perfect, before going back into the house and bursting into tears. You were an awful person for doing that to him, for playing him. You should never have kissed him, should have told him about your cancer. Instead, you were scared he would pity you, or think you were weak, and you just could not find the courage in yourself to tell him.

                After you never showed up the next day for class Dave had texted you, asking if you were alright. You never responded. His texts continued for a while, more and more desperate than the last, more worried. And not once did you ever respond out of fear although you made sure to read every text at least five times. As time continued the texts slowed down until eventually they stopped altogether. It was hard to accept, however it allowed you to hope he had moved on.

                So lost in your thoughts from the past you don’t hear the quick thuds of light feet behind you. It isn’t until you hear your name being called out that his presence is known to you at all. “Karkat! Karkat!”

                You continue walking, hoping, PRAYING for him to stop, to just leave you to your own pathetic misery. But good old God must have bypassed you message because you feel and arm grab your shoulder and whirl you around to a slightly red in the face Dave.

                “What the fuck Karkat. It’s been almost three years and you don’t even give me a ‘hey there Dave. Guess what? I just came back from the dead. Like popping daisy style just crawled on out of my grave that I’ve stayed in for the past three years. Also there was no charger in there so my phone died and that’s why I couldn’t respond to you.’”

                “Please Dave, don’t do this.” You say, glancing towards the floor.

                “Are you fucking serious right now Karkat? You kissed me and then left me and never talked to me again like a damn one night stand? You just pick up, leave school, leave the town, without a word to _anyone_ and you expect me to _drop it_?” Dave replied, anger growing apparent.

                “Please.” You say.

                “Fuck that.” He replied. “Karkat, look at me.” When you don’t he grabs you by the shoulders. “I have the right to know.”

                You finally drag your eyes to his face, full of misdirected anger. Anger at the fact that you ruined things, anger at your cowardice, anger at God for fucking you over, anger at Dave for not understanding (and you admit that one’s irrational but you can’t help it). “Fuck you” you snarl out before ripping yourself away from the other.

                As you storm out of the school you hear the door behind you slam shut with a bang and become full aware that you just closed a door greater than that of the school.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading!  
> Friendly criticism wanted!  
> :3 Have a nice day.


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